St. Therese and "Scraping My Knee"

How Teaching Taught Me How to Offer Up "Little Sufferings" to Jesus

Small sufferings are sometimes the hardest to offer up, and I learned that very early into my career as an educator. St. Therese summed up my experience perfectly when she wrote, “The more we would surrender ourselves to Love, the more we must surrender ourselves to suffering”. That rang true as I submitted myself to my vocation.

I need to fill in some background before I can explain further how all of this relates to St. Therese. In college, I was a Literature major. I could read any novel thrown my way, analyze it, and discuss it in class. The “book” side of my major was never the issue. My weakness was always in writing my papers.

My entire time at Ave Maria University, I never received a perfect score on any writing assignment in my Literature classes. It didn’t matter how great of a thesis I had, how many sources I could weave together, or how long the paper was. One hurdle always presented itself- grammar. Every paper had a similar comment from Dr. Rommel, the head of the Literature department, “If you want to receive a better grade, then learn how to use your commas”.

Quite honestly, I was typically guessing whenever I was using punctuation. “Does a comma go here? I don’t know, may as well try it out!” “When do you use a semicolon? Who cares!” As far as I was concerned, grammar wasn’t necessary. If I really wanted to, I could put my paper through Grammarly and just move on with my life.

I ended up having a conversation with Dr. Rommel one day about what my plans were for after graduation. When I mentioned that my goal was to become a junior high or high school English teacher, she chuckled and said, “God help the students whose teacher can’t even use a comma properly.”

I have to admit, the brutal honesty made me laugh pretty hard. It wasn’t everyday that Dr. Rommel was willing to laugh and have a bit of fun with us, and she was right. Looking back, it was pretty ridiculous of me to want to enter a profession without understanding half of the curriculum that I would be expected to teach- grammar and writing.

The way I saw it, I would just ignore the “mechanical” side of English, the writing and grammar, and focus on the “content” side, analyzing the works of Literature in class. I justified to myself that students would just cheat with writing their papers anyways, so it really only mattered that they could contribute to class discussions and maybe pick up a love for reading along the way.

I essentially wanted to avoid humbling myself and just admit that I needed the level of help that a 6th grader in a junior high English class would need. I could avoid that hard work and suffering if I just stuck to my plan. As they say, “Man plans, God laughs.”

Soon after graduation, I found the perfect posting- an English teaching position at an incredible, faithfully Catholic junior high school. Exactly what I was looking for. I was so excited (and sick of filling out resumes over and over again) that I called the school right away and scheduled a meeting that day to speak with the principal. What followed was a meeting that went better than I could have hoped for, and an invite to come back next week to sign a contract. Everything was going exactly as I expected. I had finally entered the career I spent four years working towards, and I could do it exactly as I had planned- take that, Dr. Rommel!

Turns out, 22-year-old-recent-graduates might just be not only the most arrogant people ever, but also the most ignorant. Throughout the entire interview process, not ONCE did I ask about curriculum. I just assumed I would be teaching some novels and the occasional writing assignment- pfffffffft easy!

A week after signing my contract, my principal invited me to have a meeting with the soon-to-retire English teacher. He wanted me to talk things over and make sure that we could have a smooth transition. It was at this meeting that I would have to submit myself to humility, suffering, and the stark reality that I can’t plan how things are going to go in my life.

I was greeted with a set of Shurley English textbooks laid out on the table, and a binder of writing prompts and notes. In my rashness, I failed to realize that junior highs tend to split their English departments in two- Reading and ELA (English Language Arts). Guess which department I was taking over?

This meant that- not only would I have to embrace grammar and writing, but there was NOWHERE to hide in the classroom. I wasn’t going to be teaching novels, but only the strict, bland rules of grammar. Even worse, my contract was signed and my fate was sealed for the next school year. Not only was there nowhere to hide, but there was nowhere to run either.

Now, what does all of this have to do with St. Therese of Lisieux? Well, like the quote at the beginning of this article read, entering a loving relationship with Christ, you know- the One that was beaten and crucified in public out of love for us- would entail embracing suffering just like He did. If a vocation is meant to reveal the love of God in a small way, then it would follow that that love would require suffering and sacrifice.

Although it was a small, modest example of suffering, being relegated to teaching Grammar and Writing was something that I had to offer up to God. Thankfully, St. Therese was giving me extra graces that first year of teaching. I was somehow able to make it through a school year that I was learning the content the day before I taught it to students, or I would get corrected by my 8th graders in the middle of a lesson (talk about a BIG dose of humility). Through it all, St. Therese’s words would repeat whenever I went to prayer, “Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice… doing it all for love.”

The beautiful thing about all of this is that the Crucifixion- the highest level of suffering imaginable- took place on a tree. From that tree sprouted forth the Catholic Church that has saved an innumerable amount of souls from eternal damnation. In other words, a suffering that is accepted will always bring forth spiritual fruit.

Luckily for me, that first year of teaching really helped me to enjoy writing and feel confident with various grammatical and linguistic rules (look at me now, Dr. Rommel!!!) From there, I’ve been able to confidently write and present on the Catholic faith, and that has borne the fruit of my ministry. All it took was my “yes” to suffer with Jesus.

Yes, I’m aware that I had a pretty nice cross all things considered- a salary, Catholic environment, great coworkers- and my suffering compared to Christ’s crucifixion was the equivalent of scraping my knee; but that doesn’t matter. It’s about starting small and offering it to Christ, regardless of the weight of that cross.

This Lent, I recommend reading The Story of a Soul. It will help you with recognizing and offering up those “little sufferings” along the way. It has been a part of my trek through Exodus 90, and it has blessed me in more ways than just being able to look back on my first year of teaching and see how God was at work. When your penances feel like they’ve become too much, just lean on St. Therese. She’ll lead you to the point that you can lovingly embrace those sufferings or at least keep it in mind as the goal while you wrestle with your cross- regardless of that suffering adding up to a crucifixion or just scraping your knee.